


Ink Stains

by forthegreatergood



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Blow Jobs, First Time, Fluff, M/M, Mild Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-07-08 20:00:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: Angels can sense love.  Too bad they can also sense when there’s a decided lack of it.  Crowley’s motives behind putting in an appearance are, as always, somewhat questionable.





	Ink Stains

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and the respective production and licensing companies.
> 
> * * *
> 
> Huge thank-you to [foxyk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk) for the beta!

Aziraphale put down his quill and stretched his hand, trying to loosen the cramp that had seized it. He wasn’t sure whether or not to be grateful for the cold that meant he couldn’t really feel it; there were a fair few other things he couldn’t feel on account of it, either. His worn homespun robes didn’t do much to keep it out, and the stone floors and drafty windows meant the paltry fire might as well have been trying to heat an ice floe. God forgive him, he knew his assignment was important, but did it have to be so damned _miserable_?

Probably not, if he let himself really think about it. The misery was likely in direct and precise proportion to how embarrassed Gabriel had been when Aziraphale had pointed out the flaw in his last operation and then refused to back down when Gabriel told him he just didn’t understand the subtlety of it. 

It wasn’t a comfortable thought, that. Aziraphale never would have pointed out the problem if it hadn’t been the sort of thing that could bring the whole endeavor to wrack and ruin. He certainly hadn’t been trying to embarrass Gabriel, though perhaps in the silence of his rooms, after five years of bone-numbing cold and constant damp and terrible food and worse wine, he could admit to himself that he hadn’t exactly been trying not to embarrass Gabriel, either.

It really hadn’t been Aziraphale’s fault, though--if Gabriel had only stopped to think about it for a moment after Aziraphale had first spoken up, there never would have been an argument for Gabriel to lose. Aziraphale winced at the tightness in his forearm. Five years of slipping lost medical texts back into the monastery’s library, five years of properly translating particularly difficult bits of theology from the Greek, five years of illustrating scenes from Genesis with a bit more accuracy than was likely strictly necessary, and every last moment of it spent tempted to perform the sort of frivolous miracle that would earn him an immediate reprimand.

He’d done almost two dozen his first week--firewood that didn’t run out, robes that weren’t quite so rough, quills that didn’t need to be dipped every other letter, enough lapis lazuli to work with from stores that had been quite depleted a moment before. From Heaven’s response, he might as well have been questioning the Great Plan.

Aziraphale picked up his pen again. The shaft split in his fingers, dousing them with ink.

“Really?” Aziraphale demanded, his voice tight with all the frustration he didn’t dare vent. Could he stop, if he started?

“It’d seem so, wouldn’t it?”

Aziraphale twisted at his seat, and the hard wooden slats of the bench reminded him of exactly how long he’d spent sitting on them that day as soon as he shifted position. 

“Crowley!” He glared from the demon to the broken quill. “Was this really necessary?”

“Not me, angel,” Crowley said, grinning. He was wearing a monk’s robes, too, though he hadn’t bothered with the tonsure any more than Aziraphale had. Get enough of the broader strokes right, he’d found, and humans tended to fill in the finer details by themselves. “Don’t think it suits you, personally.”

He waved his hand, and the black ink staining Aziraphale’s skin and the edge of his robe vanished.

“What are you doing here?” Aziraphale asked. The last thing he needed at the moment was another iteration of the inefficiency argument. Not that he was unsympathetic to it. If he was going to be dispatched to make things better for humans and a demon was going to be dispatched to make things worse for them, it might be better for everyone--humanity included--if they all just stayed home and kept their noses out of it. But he couldn’t exactly trust a demon to keep his word about not tempting people, and he couldn’t exactly trust a demon to keep his mouth shut about any such understanding, and he couldn’t exactly say that running into this demon at odd times was the worst thing in the world.

“This and that. You know, nothing of much importance.” Crowley wrinkled his nose and looked at the fire. Another wave of his hand, and warmth like a summer breeze rolled through the room. 

Aziraphale tried not to let his relief at the temperature change show, but he’d been so close to shivering with the cold that it was hard not to betray himself.

“They pulled me out of Sardinia for this,” Crowley grumbled. “Gorgeous weather, especially for this time of year. Bask on the beach all morning, spend a few hours making sure a few conspicuously unrighteous fishermen have good catches and come through storms without a scratch, hunt up some decent grub at night.” He sighed tragically and glowered at the gray fog visible through the narrow window. “Might as well have sent me to Iceland.”

“I’m sorry it’s put you out,” Aziraphale said drily.

“Thank you!” Crowley snorted. “Finally, someone has an appropriate reaction to how this whole thing’s affected me.” 

He sat down next to Aziraphale without bothering to wait for an invitation that wouldn’t be forthcoming, then seized Aziraphale’s arm to inspect his handiwork. Aziraphale jerked away, shocked by Crowley’s brazenness, and instead of letting go, the demon simply went with him.

“Not a speck of ink left,” Crowley said, satisfied, then glanced up at Aziraphale from the sharp lean they’d settled into. The force with which Aziraphale had tried to recoil had only dragged Crowley closer. “Fuck’s sake, angel. What were you doing, wallowing in the stuff?”

He reached up and wiped a smudge of ink off Aziraphale’s cheek, then straightened, all without relinquishing Aziraphale’s hand. Crowley frowned at Aziraphale’s fingers and grunted, then began rubbing them gently.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale hissed, trying to pull his hand out of Crowley’s grasp. As soft as his fingers were as they kneaded Aziraphale’s knuckles, his grip on Aziraphale’s wrist was like iron. It was as if every bit of soreness and stiffness that Aziraphale had been ignoring for the past--month? season? had it really been so long?--was waking under Crowley’s prodding.

“Yes?” Crowley asked innocently. He moved on to the next finger, rotating the first joint between the pads of his thumb and his index and middle fingers. The heat of his touch seeped through Aziraphale’s skin, slowly loosening the cramped flesh, and Aziraphale swallowed hard. It felt like stretching out his back and unfurling his wings after too long spent bent over the desk--painful in a good way, good in a painful way.

“Give me back my hand, Crowley.”

Crowley blinked at him, golden eyes almost glowing in the firelight, brows furrowing in confusion. “I don’t know what you’re on about, angel. It’s right there on the table.” He nodded to Aziraphale’s left hand. “Curled into a fist, speckled like a crow’s egg from the ink you simply can’t stay out of…”

He kept up with the gentle kneading on Aziraphale’s right hand, his expression one of polite befuddlement. Aziraphale lifted his free hand to his face and ground the heel of his palm into his forehead.

“See? Found it all by yourself,” Crowley said, satisfied. He began on Aziraphale’s thumb, and a groan escaped the angel’s lips when Crowley continued down to the thick band of muscle at the base of it. 

It hadn’t been hurting him that much, Aziraphale thought, it _hadn’t_. This was some trick of Crowley’s.

And then Crowley kept going, digging his thumbs gently into Aziraphale’s palm, then his wrist, then carefully tugging up the sleeve of his robes to knead the corded knots in his forearm.

Not a trick, no. He’d just been doing too much, without the normal magic and minor miracles that let him do too much without paying a price for it. Aziraphale was leaning on the table by the time Crowley let go, and Aziraphale barely caught the soft cry in time, barely kept himself from voicing it.

_God’s sake, don’t_ stop _, not now, please--_

Crowley began rubbing his fingers again--that same cautious care, moving from nail to knuckle, one at a time, slowly and methodically. Aziraphale swallowed.

“Honestly, angel,” Crowley murmured, once he was back to Aziraphale’s wrist. “What have you been doing to yourself?”

“It’s just a bit of writer’s cramp,” Aziraphale protested.

“It was just a bit of writer’s cramp months ago, I think. No telling what it is now. Librarian’s cramp, maybe? Bibliographer’s cramp?”

Crowley looked as disinterested as he had since he’d begun. Aziraphale couldn’t help but groan when he started on his forearm, and Crowley pulled him closer and looped his arm under Aziraphale’s so he could use both hands to work out the knots. Aziraphale closed his eyes and let himself lean on Crowley’s bony shoulder. 

It shouldn’t have been the comfort it was. Crowley was a mixed blessing at best, always ready to thwart even Aziraphale’s most pedestrian miracles and confound the best-laid plans with the most ridiculous of obstacles. Aziraphale had been the guardian of the eastern gate. It took more than a bit of warmth and an unasked-for massage to distract him from his duty.

Tears stung the back of his eyelids when Crowley finally released him. Crowley shook his own hands out, then reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out a bottle of wine. He looked around the bare room--personal effects weren’t precisely banned but were terribly frowned upon--and rolled his eyes. He pulled a pair of cups out of another pocket.

“I really should observe the rules of the monastery so long as I’m living here,” Aziraphale said quietly.

Crowley stopped, a shadow of disappointment crossing his face, and shrugged. He went to put the bottle away, and Aziraphale wished he hadn’t said anything. 

He should have rebuked Crowley from the first, should have driven him from the grounds, but it was _Crowley_ , not some wretched creature bent on nothing but corruption. Plus the demon would’ve just pouted about it for the next hundred years if Aziraphale had cast him out, and Aziraphale would probably have felt so badly about it that he’d have wound up apologizing anyway. And if he wasn’t going to drive a demon from the monastery--if he was going to let the demon sit with him and heat the room and clean the ink from his skin--he might as well drink with the demon.

Crowley’s eyes narrowed, and he paused, the bottle halfway back in his pocket. “You’re sure? Not even a little? Lovely wines, down in Sardinia. Almost as nice as the beaches.”

“Maybe a little, then,” Aziraphale said.

Crowley’s grin almost split his face, and he set the cups on the table with a flourish and began pouring.

“What _are_ you doing here?” Aziraphale asked, after they’d finished their first glass and started on their second.

Crowley scrunched up his nose and made an indelicate noise. “You wouldn’t believe. I’d made quite a bit of headway with the little fishing villages, yeah? Local priests were really hammering on God rewarding the righteous in immediate and tangible form. I guess they skipped the bit about Job when they were brushing up on their scripture.”

Aziraphale nodded and sipped his wine. It wasn’t anything to compare to some of the vintages he’d tried back when the Greeks had first started expanding their trade routes, but it wasn’t bad. And it was strong enough that he could let it go to his head a little, focus on this moment with its warmth and its comfort and not the fact that tomorrow everything would be right back as it had been.

“Well, home office says forget about that, that can see to itself, never mind the priests are still there ready to pounce on any indication that they’re right and the wicked never prosper for long. No, there’s some Benedictine bastard over in Britain copying down theological doctrines our side would rather get left in the dustbin of history. Got sainthood written all over him, apparently. The other brothers’ve even seen a holy glow coming from the room while he’s hard at work, bent over his books day and night like he’s trying to shuff off to an early Heavenly reward.”

“I see.” Aziraphale smiled thinly. Just once, someday, trusting Crowley wouldn’t make him feel like a fool. So the other monks had noticed Aziraphale’s little trick with the Heavenly light, had they? He’d only used it so he could keep working well past when candles and lamps would let him see, and it had been such a tiny, negligible thing--barely more than an extension of his angelic aura--that no one Upstairs had noticed. Small wonder the monks had been avoiding him with that shamefaced stiffness people got around the ostentatiously virtuous. “And you’re to, what? Strike him blind?”

Crowley spread his hands. “You’d think, right? That’d make sense. Take care of the problem quick and clean, let me get back to something a bit warmer and a bit more promising.”

He refilled their cups, and Aziraphale couldn’t help notice that the amount of wine left in the bottle wasn’t actually decreasing.

“It’d even be perfectly explicable, given how much time he’s spent squinting at these horrible, decrepit scrolls of his. Probably no one would even think to call in a holy man for a quick healing. Definitely wouldn’t get back to your lot that we’d been interfering.” Crowley sucked at his teeth and scowled. “But no. I get told in no uncertain terms to go and _tempt_ him into downing tools.”

Aziraphale almost wanted to laugh. Of course.

“Got a proper rant about it, too. Unbelievable, what home office sees fit to tell me about my business, these days.” Crowley shook his head and lifted his cup. “Of course, what was really unbelievable about it was they went to all that trouble and worked themselves into an unholy froth about it, and then they completely neglected to say anything about how long they want this poor monk sidelined for.”

Aziraphale blinked. Crowley leaned back so he was slouching against the table and gave Aziraphale a long look.

“I mean, I need advice about tempting a monk from someone who hasn’t laid eyes on a living, breathing human being in three thousand years, but they can’t be bothered to let me know if they want him hip-deep in ladies of the evening for the rest of his life or just, you know, taking a well-earned night off.” Crowley looked at the ceiling. “Appalling, what passes for leadership these days.”

“So, what were you planning to do about it?” Aziraphale asked carefully. He didn’t quite trust his voice, at the moment. Not with the mischief dancing in Crowley’s burnished eyes, not with the smile lurking at the edges of Crowley’s beautiful mouth. He might have a way of making Aziraphale feel like a fool for trusting him, but it was nothing compared to how much the demon loved to make Hell pay for a too-heavy hand on his reins.

“Dunno,” Crowley said, shoulders twitching. “Depends, I guess. I thought I might do a bit of reconaissance first, see what I’m dealing with. Could be the man in charge of the whole outfit’s a tight-fisted prick who only doles out the bare minimum and makes everything so miserable that my job’s halfway done already. Little bit of wine, a nice warm fire, some cheese and grapes--”

“You brought grapes?” It slipped out, too eager by half, and Crowley’s lips tightened. There was the briefest flicker of something too honest, too direct, too angry, on his lean face, and Aziraphale swallowed. The worst thing about Crowley, he’d decided some time ago, was that even his infernal gloating came with a shoulder to cry on or a sympathetic ear, and he was too damned easy to talk to. There was none of that in him at the moment, though. The flicker of emotion was gone as if it had never been there, and Aziraphale couldn’t find the words to bring it back.

“I mean, I was on the Mediterranean anyway.” Crowley drew a small cloth bag from the same pocket that had produced the cups, set it on the table, and opened it. A large bunch of the most beautiful grapes Aziraphale had seen in years spilled out of it and sat there, waiting for him. “What do you think? Enough to knock someone off the straight and narrow?”

He nudged the bag in Aziraphale’s direction, and the angel reached for them. They were heavy in his hand, and when he pulled one off the stem and bit down on it, the juice washed over his tongue like sunshine pouring across a green meadow. Aziraphale shivered with it, and then Crowley’s hand was on the small of his back, steadying him.

It was such a small thing, but somehow Aziraphale was willing away a blush at it. He wanted to lean back into it, to pull away from it, to stay right where he was and bask in it. The other monks weren’t shy about taking comfort in one another’s touch--they clasped hands in casual greeting, embraced one another warmly, sat shoulder to shoulder at the table so they could read the same psalter while the light was good, shared beds on bitter nights. Aziraphale was exempt from that sort of familiarity, kept at arm’s length and treated as if he might be a relic or a vestment only to be used on especially holy occasions. It wasn’t something Aziraphale had particularly thought about, before he’d come here and gone so long and so pointedly without it.

“Help yourself, angel,” Crowley was saying lightly. “The crop this year’s been damnably good, practically pulling the vines right off the arbors with the weight of all the fruit.”

Bask in it, Aziraphale decided. If Crowley wasn’t going to acknowledge it, then he didn’t have to, either.

Aziraphale ate his fill, and he told himself it was quite enough to make up for the way he wouldn’t have another decent bunch until he was done here. Crowley drank his wine slowly and occasionally took a particularly nice grape that Aziraphale had been eyeing, most likely because Aziraphale had been eyeing it, and Aziraphale couldn’t help but wonder what he’d looked like before the Fall. Bland, golden, untouchable? It wouldn’t have suited him, Aziraphale thought. Crowley was the only demon he’d ever seen who didn’t seem spoiled by it, polluted with it; he’d been sharpened, yes, and singed, and it had marked him with the pain of it, but it hadn’t broken him clear through to his foundations the way it had the others. He was still lovely, in spite of it all. Still whole.

Crowley sighed when Aziraphale reached for another grape, and then just like that, he was sitting on Aziraphale’s other side.

“Is it really so difficult to wash off?” he asked, taking Aziraphale’s left hand and holding it up to the light. The ink flecking his skin vanished, and Aziraphale did flush, at that.

“Well, you know,” he muttered, “it stains. Takes more than a bit of scrubbing to get it out.”

“And you’ve, what, been down here so long you’ve forgotten how miracles work?” Crowley began kneading his palm, using more pressure than he had with the right hand.

“I was doing too many of them for Gabriel’s liking,” Aziraphale said. He should tell Crowley to stop, shouldn’t he? It felt good, certainly, but it wasn’t like he needed it, wasn’t like he’d been writing page after page, day after day, with his left hand.

Crowley looked like he’d bitten into a rotten olive. “He could have assigned a few of you to this, and you could’ve all done half as many. Been home in half the time, too. Never understood why you’re always out here by yourself. Bit lonely, isn’t it?”

Aziraphale took another grape and ate it slowly, taking the measure of the question. He’d never really thought about it before--he’d been the tireless guardian of Eden’s eastern wall, given a flaming sword and a straightforward task. He hadn’t needed a companion, had he? And then when he’d been reassigned, he’d assumed it would be the same. 

Of course, the few times he’d been tasked with assisting others on their assignments, or pulled in on something that had to be a group effort if it was to succeed, he hadn’t felt any differently. There had been no particular joy in the others’ company, or camaraderie in their presence. Should he have rejoiced at their help? Should he regret their absence? It was easier to feel relief at not having to pretend a satisfaction he didn’t take in smiting the unholy or a confidence he didn’t share in some plan or other to purify the world. 

It didn’t seem like the sort of thing he ought to admit to a demon, even if the demon in question was Crowley.

“You’re always out here by yourself,” Aziraphale pointed out instead.

Crowley stared at him as if he was trying to decide whether or not Aziraphale was serious. “This may come as something of a shock to you, angel, but the Fallen aren’t exactly what you’d call team players.”

“Not even if it means infernal triumph?” Aziraphale took another grape, and Crowley’s fingers found a particularly tender spot just below his left wrist.

“Oh, well, if it’s _infernal triumph_ on the line, that’s a different story,” Crowley said, his smile turning sharp-edged. He adjusted his grip on Aziraphale’s arm and began working at the knot he’d discovered. “We’re all brothers in arms and absolutely nobody getting stabbed in the back at all, if it’s infernal triumph we’re talking about.”

“All right, all right.” Crowley was almost leaning on him, brows drawn and eyes focused on his work. He seemed oblivious to how much he was crowding the angel, and between the proximity and the relief crawling up his arm, Aziraphale wanted to squirm. “I can see the wisdom of perhaps not deploying gaggles of demons, if you’re trying to get anything accomplished.”

One was more than enough, from where he was sitting. He certainly wasn’t getting anything done for the rest of the night, and he wondered how Crowley would report it, when he spoke to whoever’d given him this assignment.

“Gaggles?” Crowley asked, sounding scandalized. He chuckled after a moment. “I suppose you do see a bit in common with geese, once you get enough of them together.”

Aziraphale couldn’t help the small, answering smile, and Crowley glanced up at him and grinned.

“There you are,” he murmured.

Aziraphale felt a heat spread through him that had nothing to do with the warmth of the fire or Crowley’s skin. Crowley’s fingers reached his elbow, and he let go, and Aziraphale had a momentary, ridiculous hope that he’d start over again, as he had on Aziraphale’s right hand.

Instead, Crowley slouched back and reached for his wine. “Though I suppose it works out well for me that it’s just you hanging about. It’d make tempting that scribe fiendishly difficult, if there was a whole flock of you.”

“Mmm.” Aziraphale looked down at his hands. They looked as if he’d never touched an inkpot in his life. “And what if the fire and the wine and the grapes don’t work? What then?”

Crowley glared at him, mortally offended. “Humans, even very holy ones, are simple creatures with simple wants and simple needs. The fire and the wine and the grapes will work.”

“So that’s all you’ve got, then,” Aziraphale said, smiling. It wasn’t so wrong, was it, to tease a demon a bit? Practically part of the mission, to puncture evil’s conceits whenever he could. “No other ideas. And here I thought you were clever.”

Crowley gaped at him, blank-faced with shock, and Aziraphale thought for a moment that he’d gone too far. Then Crowley threw back his head and laughed, and there was something so close to genuine, unadulterated pleasure in it that Aziraphale couldn’t help the flush that stole across his cheeks. He leaned his chin on his hand and watched Crowley laugh, and it was awful, how beautiful the demon was when he was happy.

“I’ll have you know that I am terribly, horrendously, immeasurably clever,” Crowley said, when he finally subsided. “I’m too clever, is the problem. I’m so clever, no one ever understands how clever I’m being, and then they do something asinine and ruin it.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale told him, nodding solemnly.

“If you must know, angel,” Crowley leaned close and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, “if none of _that_ works, I’ll likely try seduction.”

Aziraphale almost choked on his last grape. He coughed, then swallowed painfully. “Seduction?”

Crowley nodded. “Been ages since I’ve tried. I should keep a hand in, if nothing else, don’t you think?”

Aziraphale took a breath. Crowley, sitting so close and smiling at him like that and offering… this. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t have accepted Crowley’s company, Crowley’s wine, Crowley’s food, Crowley’s advice, Crowley’s sympathy. But what was one more in a list of things he shouldn’t have done?

He leaned forward, curled his too-clean hands in Crowley’s hair, and kissed him.

Crowley softened against him, and sucked at Aziraphale’s lip, and wrapped gentle hands around Aziraphale’s waist, and when Aziraphale leaned back to breathe, Crowley started to follow him.

“Crowley,” he laughed, and Crowley grinned. There was a brilliant shade of delight in his eyes, as if the demon had discovered something glorious, and Aziraphale realized Crowley was still holding on to him.

“I was beginning to think you didn’t have it in you, angel,” Crowley said, smirking.

“What, to confound your wiles and keep you away from some poor monk who just wants to be left alone to copy things in peace?” Aziraphale asked. “You underestimate me at your own peril, Crowley.”

Crowley snorted. “Had that one coming, didn’t I?” he said, almost to himself.

Aziraphale didn’t answer, too busy reveling in the feeling of holding onto him. Not that it was so very unfamiliar--they’d slogged through floodwaters and staggered drunk through city streets and been knocked about by seething crowds, he knew what it was like to have his arm around Crowley’s waist or across Crowley’s shoulders or holding tight to whatever he could reach--but there had been a pragmatism to it, before. A purpose, around which any other sensation or motive had to be arranged. It hadn’t been the simple desire to hold him coupled with the demon’s willingness to be held. Aziraphale tilted his head and smiled.

Crowley’s eyes narrowed, and he shook his head. “Are you getting _any_ of it on the page, or is that almost beside the point?”

He reached up to Aziraphale’s throat and brushed his fingertips over the delicate skin at the hollow between his collarbones, and it tickled enough that Aziraphale leaned away, laughing.

“It’s just ink!”

“It’s just ink.” Crowley rolled his eyes. “You’ve probably even gotten it all over those pretty wings of yours, haven’t you?”

He tugged the collar of Aziraphale’s robes down and frowned.

“I don’t--” The rest of it was lost in a groan when Crowley darted forward and kissed the patch of skin he’d just exposed.

“You _do_ ,” Crowley retorted, his breath raising gooseflesh down Aziraphale’s chest. “How, I don’t know, but you very much do.”

Probably, Aziraphale thought, from getting ink on his hands and then adjusting his robe every time it pulled tight or chafed or itched. It could take so long to dry, any stray drops or smears inevitably spread to everything around them. 

Crowley tugged his collar down even farther, and Aziraphale realized that he could just as easily as not have Crowley’s hands on his bare skin. Incredible, the things he could add to the simple mistake of letting Crowley stay. He tangled a hand in Crowley’s hair and guided him back up to his lips, and Crowley kissed him with a need that made hunger sing in his blood. Incredible, the things Crowley would give him if only Aziraphale let him.

They wound up on the floor, because he was as thoroughly sick of the bench and the table as he was of copying and translating and illuminating, and with their robes spread out beneath them because there was the slim chance that they’d be more comfortable as bedding than they had been as clothes. Crowley lowered him to the floor gently, knelt above him, and kissed away every spot and smudge of ink he could find. It was hard to keep still, with Crowley’s mouth tracing a constellation on his ribs, a nebula on his stomach, a binary star on his chest. 

Eventually there was nothing left--couldn’t be anything left--and Crowley was just amusing himself making the angel gasp and shiver. He felt drunk with it, drunk with the softness of Crowley’s hands on him and the cool seeping up from the stone under the robes and the heat of Crowley’s mouth on his skin and the sweetness of the grapes and the weight of Crowley’s body against his. When Crowley stopped and lapped a tiny circle over the jut of Aziraphale’s hip, it was impossible not to groan and buck against him, and Crowley ran his hands over Aziraphale’s thighs.

It was gluttonous to want more than this, wasn’t it? He’d had so much--been given so much--already, and he’d devoured it, and he still wanted more. But he’d been so long without, and he’d be without again tomorrow and the day after and the day after that, stretching out for years, and was it so wrong to want more, knowing that?

And then Crowley’s mouth closed over his aching cock, and Aziraphale suddenly understood why it was that humans went into such transports over it.

It was like being close enough to a bolt of lightning to feel the electricity’s song in his bones, like that first baffling moment of seeing the firmament and understanding that such a thing could exist, like feeling a moment of pure love in an unexpected place--unbearable and inexhaustible and unquenchable all at once. Every fiber of his being was on fire with it, and he couldn’t help the lung-filling gasp that seized him.

And then it was gone again in a heartbeat, and the only thing he could feel was the loss of it.

_No, please, not_ now _, don’t stop now, I need you--_

He opened his eyes and looked desperately at Crowley--he couldn’t stand it if this was a trick, if Crowley was teasing him--only to find concern etched deep in every line of Crowley’s face.

“Angel?” he asked softly, his voice hoarse.

Aziraphale realized that he was shaking, his whole body trembling like he was trying to rattle himself apart, and he clutched at Crowley’s hands.

“Please, Crowley.” He licked his lips and tried to put every ounce of need into his voice. “Don’t stop--I need you, I need this, _please_.”

Crowley’s frame sagged in relief, and he laughed quietly.

“ _Crowley_!”

“Shh.” He smiled fondly, his hands moving over Aziraphale’s skin gently, slowly, soothing him. “As much as you like, angel. I promise.”

And then it was back, rolling over Aziraphale like a clap of thunder, and Crowley’s arms were tight against his thighs, his hips, hands clutching at his sides, grounding him. He clung to Crowley through it all, knees tight against the demon’s ribs, wedging himself into that space where there was nothing but this, could be nothing but this, for eternity if they wanted.

It felt like a softness that could stretch forever, and then all at once it was as if Aziraphale had a sun crammed inside his chest, and it was too much and too much and too much, and his fingers were in Crowley’s hair and he never wanted to let go, and then he was staring at the cold stone ceiling in a monastery in England with a demon kissing his thigh and his wings pressing back against the floor and a whole night’s work had gone undone and he hadn’t known it could be like that.

“Have fun, angel?” Crowley asked, and there was a sort of tenderness in his tone that Aziraphale couldn’t endure, like there was a hand wrapped around his heart and squeezing.

“I--” Aziraphale swallowed and tried again. “I didn’t know…”

Crowley arched his eyebrows. “You’d never tried it?”

Aziraphale flushed and grimaced. “I mean, of course I had. People do such ridiculous things over it, I wanted to see what it was like, what it was they were after.”

“Oh, I see. It was research.” Crowley smiled in that way that usually made Aziraphale want to kick him, but it was hard to muster any enthusiasm for it with him still naked and lounging between Aziraphale’s legs.

“Yes, it was,” Aziraphale said acidly, “and my findings were that it really wasn’t everything it was cracked up to be.” He sighed and twitched his wings. “But then _that_... what did you do?”

Crowley’s smile took on an indulgent cast. “All that absurdly specific graffiti all over every wall in Rome, and you don’t know what that was?”

“I don’t mean fellatio, I mean…” What did he mean? There weren’t words for it, what he meant. “I mean the part where… where it felt like I was…”

Understanding dawned in Crowley’s eyes, and he looked away, his fingers tightening on Aziraphale’s knee.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale prompted.

“It’s not something I _did_ , angel.” He let go and shifted his weight back onto his knees, and Aziraphale realized he was about to get up, to put his clothes back on, to leave. “It wasn’t deliberate--”

Aziraphale sat up and pulled him into a tight embrace, wings half folding around them, and Crowley relaxed after a moment and rested his cheek on Aziraphale’s shoulder.

“So what was it, if it wasn’t something you did?” Aziraphale asked gently.

“No telling, really,” Crowley said, the shrug of his shoulders rocking against Aziraphale’s chest. “You lot are so sensitive to every last little thing, it’s--”

“You are such a terrible liar.” Aziraphale let his wings curl a little more tightly around them, and he pulled Crowley up so that his chest was flush with Aziraphale’s.

“I’m a demon,” Crowley reminded him, as if Aziraphale could forget. “I’d never get anywhere, not being a terrible liar.”

“I meant that your lying is obvious and artless, not that it’s immoral,” Aziraphale said. “Though I suppose it’s the latter, too, even if it’s not fooling anyone.”

Crowley huffed at that, and Aziraphale kissed his temple and smiled at the answering squeeze of Crowley’s arms around his ribs. There was an echo of that earlier starburst behind his eyes, when he closed them, and for all that they were sitting naked on the floor in the middle of the worst assignment Aziraphale had pulled yet, it was still a moment he could only find joy in.

And then Crowley shivered against him, a hard, irresistible shudder that ran through him and wouldn’t stop, and Aziraphale leaned back and took him by the shoulders, as alarmed now as Crowley must have been earlier.

“Are you laughing?” Aziraphale demanded, once he got a look at the demon’s face. Crowley bit his lip and looked away, tears welling in his eyes and his face turning red. “You are! What on earth could possibly be so funny that you--”

Crowley reached out and ran a finger lightly over a section of Aziraphale’s feathers, and Aziraphale stopped.

“Ah.”

“ _How_?” Crowley finally managed, barely suppressed laughter punctuating the question. “I mean I know I said you’d probably managed it, but I was joking. I never in a million years thought that you’d really…” He shook his head and cleared his throat. “That you’d really gotten ink all over your feathers.”

“It’s just one little patch,” Aziraphale said quickly, half-furling his wing.

“Oh, is it?” Crowley asked, carefully ruffling the feathers he could still reach. “Angel, I’m afraid it’s with deepest condolences that I must inform you--”

“Terrible,” Aziraphale sighed.

“--that it is most decidedly not just one little patch.” Crowley smoothed everything back down and cocked his head appreciatively. “Though--”

Aziraphale wrapped his arms around Crowley’s waist and rested his forehead against the side of the demon’s face. “Can you please for once just leave it be?”

“I have to take it back,” Crowley continued, unperturbed. “What I said earlier. It does suit you. Very well, I think.”

Aziraphale licked his lips, unsure of which to believe between Crowley’s teasing words and his decidedly sincere tone, and then Crowley decided for him by kissing him, carefully, gently, but very much like he meant it.


End file.
